Category: Other

I recently discovered Photo Story software by Microsoft and have been tinkering with it as a real alternative to MovieMaker as a digital storytelling device. It seems simple to use, has some built-in music features and allows you to get the Ken Burns effect with relatively short learning curve.

As an experiment, I created two stories: One is about my childhood, using old pictures that I converted to digital by using my digital camera to take pictures of pictures and the other story is about my three young sons.

I also recorded a song I wrote about my kids called Innocent Boy ( I used Audacity, so the quality is OK but not great) and inserted that song into the digital story as background music. The results were pretty nice, I have to say, and I can see introducing Photo Story to my sixth graders later this year (they are already tinkering with MovieMaker).

You can listen to my song, Innocent Boy song

Peace (in pictures),
Kevin

I’ve been following (through Bloglines) a feature of TechLearning.com called School Site of the Week that provides a wonderful glimpse into the web presence of schools.

The archive page goes back to 2002 and is a great resource for any teachers or administrators seeking to gather ideas about a meaningful web face in the world of increased interactivity.

The most recent feature is Rockburn Elementary School, which is located in Elkridge, Maryland. The description says: “Originally designed as a fifth grade student project in 1996-97, this site continues to reflect student contributions in every area and serves as a place for them to showcase a variety of work.”

Head off to the Techlearning school website archives.

Peace,
Kevin

While I was in Nashville, wandering around the aquarium-like Gaylord Opryland, I picked up a flier for this show, which is called The Teacher: A New Musical by Ken Stonecipher. Apparently, Ken, who is a teacher, wrote a full-length musical around the act of teaching (!). I tried to find a web presence for the musical (which Ken says will soon be moving on to Broadway) but I came up empty.

In the flier, this is how Ken describes it:

“For those who love teaching, it is the most exciting career of all. Where else does one get to play the role of educator, creator, counselor, baby-sitter and prison guard all in one day? In what other profession does one have to balance the behavior of 165 hormone-raging adolescents with their need for quality education?”

Well said …

I guess Ken also presents pieces of his musical as a professional development tool. The flier calls the sessions “… a brutal yet honest look at the evolution of teaching … ” Now that would be different, wouldn’t it?

I love the idea of intersecting music, arts, writing and teaching all in one — although I can’t comment on the quality of his writing (the flier was a bit sketchy) or the production values (I didn’t see any of it).

Peace,
Kevin

I just learned that I have been awarded the Exellence in Teaching Award from the New England Association of Teachers of English and I could not be happier. I have presented at a few NEATE conferences (blogging, digital claymation, etc) and written a few stories and articles for NEATE publications.

The letter I received gave me some kudos and for me, the award really supports the idea of an intergrated, creative/critical-thinking based writing program for sixth graders, and so I am deeply appreciative.

“Kevin, your teaching is a testament to your passion for innovation and engagement with your profession. Not only do you hold a highly professional ehtic but also you round your teaching to reach and affect students and colleagues alike. The breadth of your skill, knowledge and mastery of your profession is impressive.” — David O., NEATE Award Chairman, in his letter to me.

Wow! Those are very inspiring words to a teacher in the classroom and makes me all the more dedicated to my students and to others around me.

Peace,
Kevin

PS — This award falls on the heels of two NWP colleagues getting recognized for their work, too. Maria Angala of Washington DC won an award for her work for weblogging and Dave Boardman of Maine just won a co-technology teacher of the year award for the state of Maine. So I feel as if I am good company.

One reading pleasure that I get is when I open up the New Yorker magazine and there, in the table of contents, I see the byline: Malcolm Gladwell. The author of Blink and Tipping Point (both of which were built from articles in the magazine, I believe) writes with such clarity and insight about a wide variety of issues, it becomes like a little journey of the mind to follow where he is leading you.

In last week’s New Yorker, Malcolm is on the trail of software that can be used to predict the success or failure of movies. It all has to do with indentifying attributes, categorizing them in certain ways and then letting the computer analyze the structure of movies. Some movie companies are now channeling movie scripts through the computer program and pressuring for changes before the actors are even hired. There is something sterile about that process, I think, but that is another post.

What I was interested in was almost an aside in the article: the use of software to help musicians and producers analyze music, using mathematical formulas based upon beat, harmony, pitch, chord progression and cadence. The software called “Platinum Blue” can pick “whether a song is likely to become a hit with eighty-percent accuracy,” according to Malcolm. The creator of the software is not interested in the songs, per se. “He cared only about a song’s underlying mathematical structure,” according to Malcolm.

This is all very interesting but then the creator of the software comments: “We think we’ve figured out how the brain works regarding musical taste.” I wonder how that can be? And if true, does this mean that we are moving towards some uniform musical taste analysis? Interesting.

The program did predict that the song Crazy by Gnarls Barkely would be a hit. I wonder if they have put Beck into their machine? (Which reminds me of a Sesame Street skit in which Bert creates a sound machine for the letter “P” and Ernie makes it explode by feeding to many letters into it — that’s what I think Beck would do to the software — cause it to implode.)
Peace,
Kevin

As I was considering the writing of this post about comic strips (!), I realized that the site which I am going to talk about (called Darkgate Comic Slurper) may not be quite so legal and so I am in a bit of a quandry here. However, I am going to plow forward because I love comic strips and in the interests of thinking about the prospects of Web 2.0, this site is a good example of readers and writers can tailor content to fit their own needs.

First of all, I have always loved comics and it is interesting to watch my young sons now discover Calvin and Hobbes, and rush to the Boston Sunday Globe to read through the comic pull-out section (sample household dialogue from yesterday: Me – Anything good today in the comics? Older Son — Not much today. I wish they had funnier comics) This illustrated a point: There are hundreds of comics out there and we rely on the editors of the newspapers to make the choices about what we read, and their decisions are not fine-tuned to our sense of humor but to economics — how much do they have to pay the comic syndicate and how many readers will it keep?

I discovered Comic Slurper through my Bloglines RSS reader and it dawned on me that I could now create my own daily comic page with strips that tickled my funny bone. Comic Slurper somehow grabs the RSS feeds from a long list of comics, and then you decide which comics you want to view daily, and set up your aggregator reader (such as Bloglines), and every morning, there are comics that I want to read. Meanwhile, I have stumbled across a whole field of new comics that are funny that I have never even heard of before.

For example:

• Of course, Calvin and Hobbes reruns and Dilbert
• Baby Blues — which is a look inside a family with three kids, just like me
• Brewster Rockit: Space Guy — which is a bizarre Sci-Fi strip (I am a sucker for sci-fi)
• InkPen — which I am still trying to figure out but I am having a good time doing it
• PC n’ Pixel — which is a stab at the geek in all of us
• Sherman’s Lagoon — which is set in a lagoon with a talking shark (I think) and turtle
• Toyzville — which features kid toys doing strange things

I guess my point is that I am in control of the comic page that I want to set up through the benefits of an aggregator and RSS feeds and by doing this, I have some power over the content and I am not held captive to the interests of my local newspaper. That is something work celebrating!

Peace,
Kevin

I was driving to school the other day, listening to our local NPR affiliate (WFCR in Amherst, Massachusetts), when this story came on about a production at a nearby arts installation studio (MassMOCA) that fuses music, spoken language and other media into one production that examines the Truth Commissions in South Africa.

From WFCR: … a new musical based on the findings of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission will be performed. Johannesburg composer Philip Miller has created a cantata that incorporates musical composition for voice and instrument, with audio recordings taken directly from the Commission hearings — thousands of statements from men and women about the violence they experienced, witnessed, or conducted during apartheid.

The story is powerful as a story as a country coming to grips with abuse of power and socio-cultural and race relations, but the use of spoken voices from the actual commissions, combined with music, stunned me as I listened in the car and the snippets of performances reminded me of how hybrid this world can be.

Take a listen and see what you think.

Peace,
Kevin